Mayer

Pascal Mayer is a French biophysicist and entrepreneur specializing in biomolecular analysis for diagnostics, predictive medicine and drug discovery. Trained in Strasbourg where he obtained his PhD, he then pursued his research during two post-doctorates at the University of Ottawa and then at the Centre de recherche Paul Pascal (CRPP-CNRS-Université de Bordeaux), where his research work already focused on methods and inventions for DNA analysis.

He joined GlaxoWellcome's Institute for Biomedical Research in Geneva (Switzerland) in 1996, and later co-founded Manteia Predictive Medicine, to develop a new technology for massive DNA sequencing. This revolutionary technology is now used in many scientific and forensic fields, and has been a key element in the fight against Covid-19, enabling rapid identification of the virus and its mutations.

Today, he heads Alphanosos, co-founded in 2014 to use artificial intelligence to discover natural therapeutics against bacteria, viruses and cancer, based on polypharmacology concepts.

In 2022, he received the Breakthrough Prize for this work, jointly with Professors David Klenerman and Shankar Balasubramanian of Cambridge University, for fundamental and applied research leading to a revolutionary and affordable method for large-scale DNA sequencing. In April 2024, he was awarded the Canada Gairdner International Prize 2024 for this work, again with his Cambridge colleagues.